Tentative
by thefairyknight
Summary: Wanda once made Pietro promise that if anything actually happened to her, he would move on.


Wanda once made Pietro promise that if anything actually happened to her, he would move on.

He had given her his promise with obvious reluctance and dubiousness, but it had been the best she could get from him. He had never tried to get a similar promise from her, but then, he had always seemed the less vulnerable between the two of them.

Wanda was powerful, of course. All things considered, her talents were probably the more dangerous. But Pietro was so fast, and so strong, and so few dangers could not be outrun. If he would die, she always thought, it would be because he was trying to save her.

It never occurred to her that he would die trying to save anyone else.

In hindsight, that probably should have been a clue that there was something wrong with what they were doing.

Now, of course, Pietro is gone, and Wanda has no promises to keep. She can mourn him as relentlessly as she wishes, and so she does, in between attending to her duties as an Avenger.

Wanda is not naive. She knows that her freedom is conditional on her membership to this team, her participation in rectifying her horrible error, and atoning for the damage done. She shows up at training sessions. She accepts the new restrictions on her power, that she not take control of people's minds without their consent, excepting certain circumstances, that she be tracked, that she be _leashed._

Again.

At least Stark is no longer part of the team. She may have accepted the necessity of putting aside her vendetta against him, but that does not mean she can stomach the man. The man who made bombs. The man who made Ultron.

(Though he wasn't the only one with a hand in that, was he?)

She does what she must, when she must, and then she retreats, and in her personal time there is… solitude.

In solitude, there is grief.

She stews in it. That has always been their… her approach to pain, to dwell on it, to let it build up and wash over her, drown her, until it becomes anger, and the anger makes things clearer. Easier to focus, and to act. Sorrow can be debilitating, and she cannot afford to be debilitated.

She has lost her chance for vengeance, she has lost her brother, and she has lost her home. The only thing she has left is this slim tether of purpose, to become a protector, granted to her by the man her brother died saving.

Some nights she wonders why she does not burn this whole facility to the ground.

After a few failed attempts at friendliness, the others learn to avoid her outside of training. She has no desire to befriend Stark's lackey, nothing but professional interest in the team's leaders, and cool disinterest in the Falcon, who, at least, always gives her what distance she requests.

As for the other, the… not-quite-machine, the "Vision", Wanda does not know what to make of him. She tries not to read him. It is possible, but it also strange. Like reading a language she only partly understands. In one way, it is unsettling. In another, it is fascinating, and her interest only serves to unsettle her further.

She has never had much interest in men. Or women. But she is interested in this _being_ , and that is… more than she cares to handle, now or possibly ever.

So it is that when she finds the Vision standing outside of her accommodations in the base, she halts, uneasy.

It's obvious he's waiting for her. He turns expectantly at her approach, and is standing between her and her doorway - not enough to block to off, but enough that she would have to walk past him to reach it.

He has the look of a man, more or less, though there is also something distinctly androgynous about him. She supposes that stands to reason. Ultron had wanted a angel, of sorts, and angels were meant to be above the petty constructs of gender, weren't they? Though apparently, genocidal Artificial Intelligences were not so far above them as to avoid leaning distinctly towards the masculine.

Still. It suits him, she supposes. Or he suits it.

"What do you want?" she asks him, squaring her shoulders, pleased that she manages to speak calmly.

The Vision blinks his peculiar eyes at her. She wonders if he needs to, if it's involuntary, or if it's something he's doing on purpose. To seem more human, perhaps.

She wonders why she wonders so much about such silly little things.

"Captain Rogers has arranged for an excursion from the facilities," he says, polite and clear as ever. "I wondered if you would come?"

She raises an eyebrow.

"You are going?" she asks. There have been plenty of 'excursions' before, of course, but she had no interest in them, and so far as she'd gleaned, the Vision had been too conspicuous to venture out for most.

He glances down, briefly, as he sometimes does when concentrating, and then his 'skin' shimmers, turns from its usual vibrant colour to a dun brown, and some of the texture bleeds away from it.

He is still obviously inhuman, the lines on his skin and the oddness of his eyes unchanged, but in the right clothing, he might pass for one at a glance. Or a distance.

A moment later, his skin ripples again, and he is back to normal.

"Black Widow deemed my disguise sufficient for this occasion," he says.

"Congratulations," she tells him. "I don't do outings. Have a nice time."

She works up the nerve to walk past him - so close, his mind, simmering under the surface, she could just reach out and touch it, but now, at least, she has rules to help contain her curiosity - but he speaks again.

"Why not?" he asks, just as she is in front of him.

He is very quiet. Very gentle. She would think he was handling her with special care, but that simply seems to be his nature.

(He was gentle when he lifted her from the rubble, gentle as someone who often held her always was, and she thought for an instant that…)

"I don't see the point," she mutters at him, and keeps walking, and slams her door shut behind her.

~l~

He is persistent.

She is not expecting that.

Largely because she has no idea why he would bother to be. She does not wonder why he saved her life. He is such that values all life, even the lives he takes, so it's no surprise that he would try to save as much of it as possible.

Socializing is a different thing, and there are better targets for it in their group. Namely, everyone else.

But what starts with one request at her door becomes another, and then she finds if she gets to training early he will be there (where before he would always arrive precisely on time), and she passes him in the hallways with much greater frequency, and even, on one occasion, finds him standing in line at the cafeteria.

"You can eat?" she wonders, before she stops herself.

"I can safely ingest many substances, though my body does not process nutrition the same way yours does," he tells her, simply.

 _Then why are you here?_ she wants to ask him. _Curiosity? Do you enjoy eating? Have you tried it before?_

 _Were you hoping to run into me?_

She bites her tongue.

Nothing good can come of this interest. She is vulnerable here, alone, but she will only become more vulnerable if seeks to make new connections.

She has never been good at it, besides.

They stand in line in silence, and if the Vision minds, he does not say so. Though he waits, while she gathers her food.

"Would you eat with me?" he asks.

She hesitates, grip tightening around the wrapper of her sandwich, crushing it slightly. Her gaze drifts over to the empty tables.

"No. I eat in my room," she says, and turns to leave.

"I could eat in your room with you," the Vision suggests.

From any other man, the suggestion would seem clumsy, at best, or presumptuous and invasive, at worst. From him, it simply seems like an ill-informed attempt at compromise.

"I eat in my room because I want to eat alone," she tells him, plainly, and does not wait for his response.

~l~

Her room is too bright in the day and too dark at night, sparse and quiet, vast and empty. She is not tidy. She leaves clothes strewn about, knocks over end tables and neglects to pick them up, casts bed sheets and covers onto the floor, abandons empty food cartons on the coffee table.

It's always righted by evening, some cleaning staff or another coming and picking up after her. She hates it, always coming back to a pristine room. As if she can never really _live_ in it, because every trace of living she does throughout the day is always reset by the end.

She will not ask them to stop, however. In a strange way it almost seems fitting. She's not really living here, after all. She's just… walking around.

It's hardest at night. She has dreams. Her mind is too inventive for its own good. She dreams of her brother, running, a bullet chasing him, slowly but surely catching up to him while she watches, incapable of stopping the inevitable. She dreams of the apartment, of the shell with _Stark_ written on the side, as she has not for years. But where before she was always with her brother, now she is alone - still waiting for it to go off.

She dreams of her parents. They see her, standing among the Avengers, and they spit at her, and slap her, and call her a traitor.

She dreams of falling. Burning. Being split it in half. One memorable night she dreams of ripping out Ultron's heart, only to look down and see Pietro lying in his place, and she wakes in a cold sweat and has to run to the toilet to vomit until she has nothing left to bring up.

The next morning, she heads for training early. The Vision is there, floating in the center of the room, staring at the walls. His cape shines like a waterfall of gold in the sunlight.

She wants to leave. But she cannot go back to that room, and there are few other places in the facility that will not be locked down this early in the morning.

There is no reason the Vision's… floating, need impede her plans, she decides, and goes to retrieve her practice drones.

"Good morning," he says.

She waves somewhat half-heartedly in response.

"Did you sleep well?" he asks her.

It's a standard question. She doesn't look at him.

"Fine," she says. At least if she is dreaming, she _is_ sleeping. There had been a week during her time with the HYDRA scientists when something had gone wrong, and she had not been able to sleep at all, no matter how tired she felt. Pietro hadn't slept much either, trying to help, singing old lullabies and brushing her hair, but not matter how comfortable she was, always, at the last moment before sleep, she would jerk awake, as if some hook was pulling at her mind.

"Forgive me. You are showing signs of fatigue and ill health. Perhaps you should seek medical attention," the Vision suggests.

She can't help but scoff.

"Ill health," she repeats. "This? This is nothing. You don't know what illness looks like."

"I have access to countless images and video recordings of ill and injured humans," he counters.

"Forgive me if I don't think your internet browsing counts as expertise," she snaps.

"Have I offended you?" he asks. "It wasn't my intention."

"You haven't offended me. You've irritated me," she replies, and forces herself to focus, to get her training drones out, to ignore the eyes following her movements.

"Then I apologize."

"Just - don't talk anymore," she requests, inexplicably frustrated.

He stays silent until the others begin to trickle in, an hour later.

~l~

During training, she is good. She is focused. She accomplishes most tasks on the first or second try, and rarely needs instructions repeated. Though, Avengers training is far less focused on pressing the very limits of her abilities than HYDRA had ever been. It takes more concentration, more reservation than she's used to.

It leaves her with headaches, more often than not, but that's hardly surprising. They're manageable, only flaring up into excruciating levels in the presence of unexpectedly loud noises or bright lights.

She gets a combination of both one evening when something in the workshop goes wrong, and an explosion rocks against the safety shielding near her hallway, right as she is going past.

She doesn't remember screaming. She _definitely_ doesn't remember letting loose a surge of psionic energy that knocks out the personnel up to two floors above her.

What she remembers is the pain, and then the surge of fear, the light and the sound and the ringing in her skull, that seemed to go on for an eternity until someone grabbed her and then the next thing she knew she was outside, up and out into the cool evening air, with purple clouds overhead and a warm chest beneath her cheek.

It's too high, and they're not going fast, not moving away from the danger anymore. It's all bizarre and off-kilter, right and wrong at the same time.

"You're safe," the Vision tells her. "You must stop."

"Stop what?" she asks.

"Stop using your powers," he says.

Is that what she's doing? Is she slowing them down? She tried that, once, just to see if she could. It made poor Pietro so nauseous. Not good.

She reigns herself in, sucking in deep breaths of fresh air. Some of the pain subsides. Gradually, her disorientation goes with it.

"What happened? What did I do?" she wonders at last.

"There was an accident. You… reacted to it," he explains.

"Is anyone hurt?" she asks. God, don't let any more people be hurt. She's so sick of people getting hurt.

Over her, the Vision tilts his head, slightly, and gets that somewhat distant look that says he's checking something.

"Three lab technicians who were close to the source of the accident have suffered severe burns. They should recover," he declares, at last.

"Good. That's good," she decides.

From below, a voice bellows up at them.

She peers down, as does the Vision, to see Captain America frowning up at them. His expression does not bode well for whatever non-fatal damage her powers might have caused in the meantime.

"Shit," she says, with feeling.

~l~

"You're not field-ready," the Captain tells her.

"I was 'field-ready' when we were fighting Ultron," she replies, her mouth dry and her lips tight with anger.

"Those were exceptional circumstances," her 'team leader' tells her.

"Are the Avengers ever used for _any other kind?"_ she wonders, trying to hold onto her anger so that she doesn't give in to her fear. This isn't good. She can't _be_ the unreliable one. She isn't some billionaire playboy who can buy her way out of nearly destroying the world.

If she doesn't have this, then she has no doubt that it will be a cell waiting for her.

Captain America does not look impressed.

"In light of your circumstances, I've tried to be patient," he tells her. "But either you're on board, or you're not. Either you're part of this team, or you aren't. You've been drifting in and out of the fringes for months. You barely interact with the group, your teamwork is frankly terrible, and you just demonstrated that even the strides you've been making in focus can go completely out the window at the first unexpected sign of trouble."

She feels a surge of confusion, and forces herself to push past it. Her teamwork is terrible? How? She does what she's told. She's committed to being here; otherwise, she would not be.

"Says the man who served on the same team with the _Hulk,"_ she replies. "Did you give him lectures on focus, too?"

"I never needed to. His situation wasn't like yours - and frankly, I don't think he was ever as dangerous," Captain America tells her.

"What do you want from me?" she wonders. "I do what you ask. You give me a task, I do it. I follow orders. You want me to be so good I never slip up? Fine. I'll get that good. Just give me time, it can't happen over night!"

Some of the sternness drops from the captain's face, as if she's surprised him, somehow.

"Obviously, we don't want you making a lot of mistakes with powers like yours," he says. "But no one's control is perfect. I don't expect that."

Wanda tosses her hands into the air.

"Then what?" she wonders.

"You need to be _here_. With the team," he tells her. "You're lucky Vision figured out what was going on and managed to safely intervene. No one else would know what to do. Part of being on a team is figuring out how to understand one another, so that if one person slips, someone else can catch their slack. But hardly anyone knows you, Wanda. How are we supposed to know when or where to help you?"

She stares, dread pooling in her gut, and shifts uncomfortably. What's this? What's he asking her for? She's here. She lives here. She never _leaves._ Who needs to know her? They just need to know what she can do. They're teammates. That's all.

But she's going to have to figure this out, if she's to fix this mess.

"I'll… work on it," she says.

"That's all I ask," Captain America replies.

~l~

She remembers, before their parents died, when she was still close to her brother but it wasn't the same. When she was friends with other little girls, and went to birthdays and slumber parties, and ran around playgrounds with their dolls, and made up silly games.

There was one girl - Wanda doesn't remember her name - who wasn't as good at it as the rest of them. Her doll was old and shabby, and she was too quiet, never volunteered many ideas for games, never brought good presents for birthdays or had fun parties. She was part of the group, but on occasions when she didn't show up, it was easy to go on playing without her. Sometimes easier than playing with her.

Wanda supposes she is that girl, now.

The first mission after The Accident, they leave her behind with the plane.

"We'll signal if we need you to come in," Captain America tells her.

She nods, does as she's told, watches the Falcon and the Warmachine and the Vision fly out of the open hatch, the Captain and the Black Widow roaring away on motorcycles, tearing towards the facility that has been performing illegal experiments with gamma radiation.

Then she takes her seat at the console, and waits.

The chatter over the communication network is loud. Falcon likes his victory cries. Warmachine likes to brag, and Black Widow likes to goad. She wonders if she should join in, reply to some of the comments and claims as the fighting seems to be going well, but she can't think of anything worth saying.

None of it really seems like it's worth saying.

"I have breached the inner facility," the Vision declares.

"Wait for backup before proceeding," Captain America orders.

"I'm on my way down," Black Widow says. "But I got a few angry customers on my tail."

"I will be ready to assist," Vision replies.

Then the communication system dies.

Wanda pauses, for a moment just thinking it's gone quiet, but there should be _something_ \- breathing, or an echo of the gunfire that she can hear distantly through the open hatch. She checks the console to make sure she didn't accidentally flip the wrong switch, but everything seems fine on her end. She's just not getting any signals. She sends a few out, but whether they're received or not, she has no idea.

Which cannot possibly be a good sign, but might simply be some sort of interference.

Still, it means she won't be able to hear it if they call for her.

She hesitates, for a moment. The front of the plane is warm with the thrum of machinery. The back is cold, wide open to the wilderness.

After another moment, she gets up from her seat, and heads towards it. The terrain outside is wooded and mountainous and difficult to see past. She thinks she glimpses some explosions up high above, but nothing distinct enough to give her a real clue about what's going on.

She stretches her senses as far as they can go instead, looking for a hint of mental presence. A few tiny woodland creatures are all she gets before she runs to the end of her range.

Closer, then.

She glances back towards the ship, and hits the command to close up the hatch. No need to get it hijacked or stolen or otherwise compromised. She doesn't need any more black marks on her record.

Then she strides through the trees with purpose, resisting the urge to fold her arms around herself, doing her best to ignore the vulnerability of her solitude. There is no one here to watch her back, but she can watch it herself, as long as she keeps her focus.

She can.

Her first warning is the crashing sound as something hits the canopy overhead, and she wraps her powers around whatever-it-is and flings herself sideways more out of reflex than anything else.

'It' turns out to be Warmachine, so it's probably a good thing she stopped his fall.

"Witch?" he asks, voice strange through his mask.

"Should I let you go?" she wonders.

"Uh, hang on," he replies, and after an awkward moment, his repulsors flicker back to life. She releases him, and he hovers mid-air for only a second.

"My comm's down. Cap call you in?"

"Everyone's comm is down, by the looks of it," she replies. "I thought I'd better come make sure you weren't all dead."

"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Weren't you fighting something?" she wonders.

"Just blew it up," he replies. "Somebody's been pirating Stark technology again, but the knock-offs can never really keep up."

"Yes. No one quite has the knack for building killer machines that Tony Stark does," she replies. "Weren't you with Falcon?"

"He left to secure the roof before communications died. I'll go make sure that he has," Warmachine decides. "You should head back to the ship."

"I'll take it under advisement." Technically, she's not outranked by anyone other than Captain America and Black Widow on this team, and she's not about to let James Rhodes get into the habit of thinking he can order her around.

"Yeah, I'm sure you will," Warmachine replies. "Look, just be careful, okay? Facility's a mess, there are a lot of stray hostiles around."

"I can look after myself," she tells him.

She's not entirely sure she believes it. But she wants to, and if her uncertainty shows, then Rhodes gives no sign of it. He nods at her and then takes off again, machine suit whirring.

She watches him go for a moment, and then sets off again, nerves jangling, fists tight at her sides, breaking into a light jog.

 _Race you there._

By the time she gets within sight of the facility there is a tight, hot knot of anger at the core of her, eating away the edges of her fear. Which is probably a good thing, because that's right around the same time that something _bursts_ from the side of the structure like a tank through a flimsy brick wall.

For an instant, she thinks it is the Hulk. But only for an instant. The beast is clearly not Banner. Its flesh is more yellow than green, and its covered in Chitauri-like plating, with yellow blood or pus or chemicals of some kind seeping from the joints. Bone-like protrusions just from the sides of its limbs, and its hands are more like armoured lobster claws.

One of them is crushing something in its grip. Wanda spies a flash of beetroot-red flesh and green energy. The Vision. A fist punctures through the claw, and the creature howls and slams its captive into the ground, hard enough to shake the earth.

Wanda moves, slipping through the trees, flexing her fingers as red energy crackles at their tips.

Fear won't do. They don't need this beast on any more of a rampage than it already is.

It's pummelling at the point in the ground where it thrust the Vision, odd cracking sounds punctuating with flashes of green, roaring loud enough to make her ears ring, and she can't tell what damage it might be doing, if the Vision is hurting it or it is hurting him or both.

Finally, she's close enough. The brute's mind is a wave of disconnected impulses, rage and pain and fear, more animalistic than even most animals. There are no dreams to pluck at. Its memories are a shattered mess. Something simple, then.

"Sleep," she whispers, and casts her power over it like a net. Tendrils of red shimmer around the monstrosity's skull, and it halts its assault.

For a moment it simply stands in place, a fierce adrenaline warring against her attempts to drag it into unconsciousness. It wavers, like a terrible tree in a storm. It takes much more effort than she expects. She has to _focus_ , until her temples are pounding and her hands are shaking, and her eyes feel like they're trying to burn their way out of their sockets. This mind might be basic and disjointed, but it is aggressive, and battles against stillness as if it is the very antithesis of its being.

When at last the creature topples, she lets out a relieved curse, and drops her hands to her knees.

"Vision?" she calls.

There is a pause, long enough to make her stomach drop in dread. But then he drifts up from the crater made by the creature's blows, looking only slightly less pristine than usual.

"Thank you for the assistance," he says.

"Shit. Don't take so long to answer next time!" she tells him, pressing a palm against her forehead, and finally gets a handle on her equilibrium again.

"I apologize. You were… concerned," he replies, as if it is a revelation.

She was, too.

"No I wasn't. Shut up," she tells him.

Now he just looks confused.

A change of subject's probably in order.

"Communication is down," she says.

"I know," he replies. "The facility possesses some sort of signal dampening device. I believe they hoped it would also interfere with my systems operation, but so far it has only disabled my internet connection. And tickled."

She squints at him.

"Was that a joke?" she asks.

"Yes," he tells her. "It seems it fell flat."

She makes a so-so gesture with her hand.

"I've heard worse," she assures him. Then she jerks her head towards the unconscious not-Hulk. "So are there any more of these around?"

"Only-" he begins, but he's interrupted by a crashing rumble, and the ground trembling. There is another roar.

For a split second, Wanda expects her brother to come rocketing in and grab her, and then she remembers with a lurch, like a missed step in the dark, that he won't, and she flings herself sideways as something massive charges her from the corner of her eye, but then a pair of arms close around her, anyway.

Her power crackles reflexively around her, and feeling it come into contact with the Vision is like jostling a curtain in the middle of winter and glimpsing a vibrant, summer field outside.

The shock of it is easily swallowed up by the roaring beast charging at them, however. The Vision pulls her back, and she reaches forward, trying to catch the thing's mind, but it's even worse than the other had been, all violence without a foothold elsewhere, and she thinks she _might_ be able to make it hungry but she doubts having the damned creature trying to eat them instead of pulp them would be helpful, and so she trips it instead.

Almost as soon as it goes down it gets up again, but it buys them enough time for Vision to ascend beyond the reach of its flailing arms.

Then a red, white, and blue shield comes rocketing out of the hole in the facility wall, and catches the beast on the back of its neck. It turns, with a roar, and the Vision shifts his grip on her before projecting a blast of energy at the same spot.

It only forces the creature to its knees, however, before it manages to break away from the line of fire with a roar.

Wanda thinks this one is bigger than the other, too.

"Can you stop it?" Vision asks hers.

"What do you think I've been trying to do?" she asks, but reaches for the thing's mind again.

It's like an inferno, though. Maybe she could try and get it to burn itself out?

Captain America and Black Widow pour onto the battlefield in earnest, then, a flurry of shield and bullets, trying to keep the creature distracted while the Vision takes shots at it.

She narrows her eyes. There. When its attention is divided, she can get a little further.

"When need to keep it distracted," she realizes. Reaching down, she pats the Vision's arm. "Put me the on ground and go get Warmachine and Falcon. The more targets it has, the better."

The Vision hesitates.

"You will be vulnerable on the ground," he points out.

"I have to keep trying," she insists. "Just put me down."

He hesitates still, just half a second longer, and then does as she asks, and zips off to retrieve their comrades.

The ground is trembling and the monster seems too close, even at the distance he's left her, but she lets out a breath because despite her efforts, her own focus had been divided, too.

But now it isn't. She helps keep the monster busy, yanking at its limbs, drawing its attention with bursts of energy before the captain or Widow can redirect it yet again.

"We need to bring this down!" the captain shouts. "Maximoff, when did you leave the plane?"

"Well I thought I saw something shiny in the distance, so I wandered off after it!" she shouts back, which is probably not her best idea.

Captain America just snorts at her, though.

"Did that shiny thing happen to be a certain pretty gold cape?" Black Widow wonders.

Wanda calls her something extremely impolite in her native tongue.

"Steve, Maximoff said a bad word!" Widow sing-songs, like a child tattling to a teacher.

"Oh for…!" the captain replies, and then there is no time for talking any more, as frustration seems to be making their target move even faster than before.

The thing charges at Black Widow, and Wanda grasps at its limbs, barely managing to slow down its momentum, and then something explodes against its back.

Falcon, Warmachine, and Vision converge on them again, a flurry of attacks from above that buy Widow more than enough time to get clear, and successfully redirect the monster's attention.

"Hey, ugly!" Falcon shouts. "Try and catch the birdie!"

He weaves around the monster, _just_ beyond its grasp, and then Warmachine fires a volley of ammunition at the reaching claws, powerful enough to crack the armour plating on them.

Pain.

 _Fear._

Yes, good. Perfect. She snakes her way in and drags those feelings front and centre. In a more organized mind, there would be images. Delusions, Dreams. But there's none of that complexity here, just the feelings.

Still, it's a better kind of mania. Less focused on causing harm, torn instead by the urge to defend and the desire to flee, aggression versus self-preservation until the beast is flailing in panicked indecision. It wavers in the middle of their impromptu battleground.

"Hit it!" she shouts at the others, in case they misread the situation and think she's going to be able to knock it out.

They comply - simultaneously - and the shockwave from Warmachine's ordinance nearly knocks her off her feet.

She doesn't need to wait for the smoke to clear to know that they've finally brought the creature down, however, its mind flickering and then going utterly silent, without even the dim flickers of unconsciousness.

"It's dead!" she announces, for the benefit of the others.

For a moment, there is relief.

And then there is gunfire.

Most of it sounds closer to where she last saw Captain America and Falcon, but there is _bang_ behind her and it feels like she's been punched in the back, and then she looks at herself and sees red spreading on her front, like a flower blossom opening.

"Huh," she says, and remembers all the flower blossoms that had riddled her brother's corpse.

Someone is shouting something about Captain America. There is smoke in her mouth and sunlight overhead, and she can feel their minds, now, these gunmen, and their fear, and she buries them in it until the pain begins to register, and her mind feels like it's boiling, and she whites out.

~l~

She wakes up in the infirmary at the Avengers facility.

They tell her she took a bullet, and so did Falcon, and Captain America took four, but she'll be fine. It should only take a day or two for their fancy medical technology to fix. There won't even be a scar, they assure her, as if she is not already so covered in scars that she would struggle to care about a new one.

She's not expecting visitors.

But Black Widow isn't wholly a surprise. If the captain is recovering from his own injuries, that makes her team leader. Checking up on her would be her responsibility.

"I think I'll skip the part where I ask about all the things the medical staff just told me," Widow says, and instead offers her a soda. With a straw.

Wanda stares at it for a moment. It's stupid, offering a sick person sweets. It's the sort of thing her brother… it's not the sort of thing she thought was common behaviour.

She holds onto it until the cold starts to hurt her hand a little.

"Don't like soda?" Black Widow asks. "It's kind of an Avengers tradition. Get popped, have a pop."

"It's fine," she replies, shaking her head.

Tentatively, she brings it up to her lips, and takes a sip.

"Steve thinks you're having trouble adjusting to the team," Widow tells her, casually, as if they talk about Captain America's opinions between themselves all the time.

"I'm _trying,"_ she says, and the soda can crinkles a little in her grip.

"Are you?" Black Widow wonders, bluntly.

"Yes! I am!" she snaps, frustration leaking out, but if the other woman is bothered, she doesn't show it. Instead she smiles a little.

"Good," she says. "Then let me give you some advice, from one atoner to another. Trying to keep your distance? Isn't going to work."

Wanda blinks, surprised by the sudden… warmth in the Black Widow's tone. She is a master manipulator, of course, but for the moment, she seems to be quite genuine. Though, perhaps that is where the 'master' part comes into play.

"That giant, impenetrable wall you think you've put up around yourself? It's a chain link fence. At best. It's not going to stop anything from getting in, not really. You can try to keep yourself from feeling connected, so that you won't have to worry about being burned, but the truth is, some things will burn no matter what. The only thing you actually will do is stop yourself from fully appreciating what you've got while you have it."

Wanda stares, but the Black Widow isn't looking at her any more. She's staring out the window, instead, contemplative and a little wistful.

"I'm not good at making friends," she admits. "I was born with my best one. Spoiled me for all the others."

"Lucky for you, you're surrounded by people who _are_ really good at making friends," Black Widow informs her. "If you really want to try to make this work? Then just give them the chance to."

She gets up and leaves, then, and Wanda is glad, because half a minute later her eyes are burning, and she's sitting in the hospital bed, sipping her soda and dripping tears onto her hospital gown.

She's composed herself - thankfully - by the time she looks up and sees the Vision standing in her doorway.

He's holding a small glass vase full of bright red tulips.

For a moment, he stands there, staring at her, and she sits there, staring back at him.

"Did… are those for me?" she asks, stumbling over her words.

"It _is_ customary to bring flowers to injured parties," the Vision tells her.

She can't help but quirk a smile.

"Did you bring flowers to Falcon and Captain America, too?" she asks, as he finally makes his way in.

"I haven't visited them yet," he replies. "Do you know what type of flowers they might enjoy?"

"No," she says, with a breathless little laugh. There is a bright feeling in her chest, beneath the pain. A little spark of happiness. It seems so queerly strong, and unfamiliar, like the first glimpse of light after a long, long darkness.

The Vision lowers his vase onto her bedside table.

"Thank you for the flowers," she says. "They're beautiful."

"You're welcome," he replies.

"Flowers and soda pop," she muses, gesturing to her empty can. "I'm being spoiled."

"I don't believe these gifts would be considered an extravagance," Vision says.

"Depends on what you're used to," she replies.

He looks at her, and she wonders if anyone has given him any gifts yet. She knows his birthday. What kind of gifts would he like? Books, maybe? But, no, any information he wants, he can find. Perhaps he would think books were pointless. Or perhaps he would not, perhaps he would find holding the physical knowledge in his hand to be a change of pace.

"I hope your recovery is as seamless as the doctors anticipate," he tells her.

"Well wishes?" she asks, with a quirk of her lips. "Did you find a guide on the internet?"

"Several," he admits, unabashed.

"Good job. You're very comforting," she tells him, with a smile, and his features soften, some, and he doesn't-quite smile back at her.

Of course, the doctor chooses that moment to come back and check on how her treatment is progressing. Vision bows out, politely, and it summons a rush of disappointment in her to see him go.

After a moment of indecision, she decides to let herself feel it.

~l~

Despite taking four times the number of bullets as the rest of them, Captain America is, of course, the first to recover. Wanda finds herself released from the infirmary's clutches at the same time as Falcon, standing next to him in the hallway with their newly knit flesh, a vase of tulips and in her arms and a basket of daisies in his.

After a moment, she nods at the daisies.

"Vision?" she asks.

"Yeah," he replies, with a chuckle. "I thought he was being a smartass, but I guess he got you some too?"

"I don't think that means he wasn't still being a smartass," she informs him.

"Maybe not," Falcon concedes, with obvious scepticism.

He starts walking, and she walks alongside him.

"Good call on the mission, by the way. I know Cap told you to stay behind, but I think you made the right choice, coming after us. I'm not sure how we would have taken those things out without you."

"Thanks," she says, not totally certain how else to respond to the praise.

"I heard about what happened," he continues. "About… everything, you know? I know some people have been worried about your commitment. I want you to know, I'm not."

"No?" she asks.

"You show up," he says. "Every day, rain or shine, you show up. Some people don't realize how much effort that can take, just by itself, even when you aren't smiling about it. _Especially_ when you aren't smiling about it."

Wanda thinks about what Black Widow told her. At least on one account, it seems, she was very correct - Sam Wilson strikes her as the kind of man who would easily make any number of friends.

"Where are you going?" she asks him.

"Cafeteria," he replies. "I prefer to eat out, but I should probably take it easy, what with the newly grown parts and all. Want to come?"

She sucks in a breath.

"Sure," she replies. "I could eat."

~l~

She finds the Vision outside of his room a few days later. He floats through his doorway and then stops, staring at her.

"Captain Rogers has organized an outing," she tells him. "I was wondering if you would like to come along?"

He tilts his head at her, eyes widening a little.

"I would," he agrees.

She smiles.


End file.
